


If We Were

by aintweproudriff



Series: Jimmy Campbell In-Canon Fics [2]
Category: Bandstand - Oberacker/Oberacker & Taylor
Genre: F/M, M/M, Soft Boys, Takes place while they're in NYC, everyone is a little gay, lots of metaphors bc im practicing being descriptive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-01
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-05-31 22:36:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15129248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aintweproudriff/pseuds/aintweproudriff
Summary: "So he looked around, taking in every last glint of gold-crested railings and every splash of the fountain. And he didn’t get lost on the way up to his room, and he didn’t get lost in every last glint of Johnny’s smile and every soft laugh he let escape."After losing the contest, Jimmy and Johnny share a similar hotel hallway flirtation.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I said I wasn't going to write more for bandstand, but when have I ever been honest about writing?  
> Thanks to the person who said they would read more if I wrote it, and I'm sorry it's not jimmy/donny.

The lights of the city flashed: red, green, yellow, blue, purple, orange. Rainbow lights of clubs, cameras, spotlights, cars, and traffic lights blinded Jimmy on the walk back to the hotel. Maybe he was drunk on the drinks he had at the club, or maybe he was simply drunk on the feeling of being in New York City, but even the swing music felt like colors in his head. He strode down the sidewalk alone, trying his best to take it all in. Even the smell of gasoline and cigarette smoke and the noises of cars revving when it was much too late to be driving. And he wasn’t truly alone, of course. Nick, Wayne, and Julia were a few feet ahead of him, and Johnny, Donny, and Davy a few steps behind. With all of his new bandmates having become his closest friends, he knew that he would never have to be truly alone if he didn’t want to be. That was good news; after a few months at home with only his own company (and occasionally the company of people at the club where he played, but they didn’t count, at least not like the band did), he had started to miss the feeling of always having someone around for him if he needed it.   
Jimmy looked up at the backs of his friends, the ones who would be there for him. Julia, bright and gentle at the same time like a candle on a desk, a last hope of warmth during a long night. Nick, always with a straight back and a fist curled in preparation for a fight against anyone who got in the way of his goals - or his friends, if it came down to it. Wayne, who might need a few hours notice before meeting with Jimmy to see what the problem was, but ultimately was comfortably predictable and easy to be around. Since the two of them had started living together, the positives of their personalities had flourished, and the negatives had faded. They were good for each other.  
He turned around to look behind him at his friends. He knew Donny would be there for him. Despite all his original worry, Donny had kept his secret with perfect silence, dignity, and respect. And he knew that Davy would be there for him too, of course. There with a joke, and a drink, and an understanding tone.   
And then there was Johnny. Honest, warm, sweet Johnny Simpson, who looked at New York with the widest eyes. Johnny had made it very clear from the first day that he would be there for any of the guys, without question. He trusted like that. Jimmy had wondered at the beginning of their third rehearsal if he even had an option to not trust. The thing he knew best was his worst nightmare; it was all he could talk about and still be the expert on, so he shared his darkest parts with people as soon as he met them. And he didn’t ask for anything in return, except an ear to listen. The lights bounced off his face like he was the pool of water in the hotel lobby.   
Jimmy slowed the pace of his steps, and fell in time with the three of them. After a few seconds of trying, they gave up on trying to fit four people on the sidewalk (it wasn’t actually big enough for three in the first place, but this group of people is nothing if not determined), and Donny and Davy moved to the middle of the pack.

“What are you thinkin’ about?” Johnny asked, his voice low, whispering like he needed to keep the question a secret. 

Jimmy breathed in a breath of air, his head feeling lighter as he did. “Just the band,” he smiled. “How I feel lucky to be here.”

Johnny laughed, a sound like cymbals and a smile like strobe lights. “Yeah. I’ve been thinkin’ that all night. I’m just tryin’ to take it all in, try to remember all of it. Even if I just remember the feeling of bein’ here, I think that’ll be enough.”

Jimmy nodded. He thought he might like to remember this feeling - here and now - forever. Walking with a friend through New York City, a little tired, a little tipsy, a lot proud of the work he’d done and a lot happy. 

The group of them walked through the doors of the hotel, and Jimmy pulled his eyes away from Johnny’s face. If he watched, his memories of New York might be filled with images of Johnny instead of images of the actual places they visited. And as much as he liked watching Johnny’s face, it sure would be a shame if they worked so hard to get to this hotel and he didn’t remember it. So he looked around, taking in every last glint of gold-crested railings and every splash of the fountain. And he didn’t get lost on the way up to his room, and he didn’t get lost in every last glint of Johnny’s smile and every soft laugh he let escape. 

Jimmy turned the key in the lock of his and Donny’s shared bedroom, and he walked through the door, alone. Donny had walked Julia to her room, like a gentleman. Unlike a gentleman, however, Jimmy had to wonder if Donny would be back to his actual room or if he would stay in Julia’s for the night. He brushed the thought out of his mind as he took his shoes off and set them by the door. Even with alcohol in their systems, whatever Donny and Julia decided to do tonight or any other night was obviously what they wanted to do. If Donny stayed the night, Jimmy knew that both of them would be more than happy with that outcome. 

Jimmy was already in bed, trying to read just one last chapter before falling asleep, when the door creaked open. 

“Didn’t think you’d still be up,” Donny’s voice was throaty. “It’s -”

“-a big day tomorrow. I’m aware.”

“Yeah. Well, it’s important that we get some sleep.”

Jimmy put his bookmark between pages and set the book on the nightstand. “Is that why you’re in our room and not still a floor above us?”

“Rooms are generally where people sleep, Jimmy,” Donny bit back, his voice sour and disappointed, like they had already lost the competition without even playing. “But,” he took a deep breath in, “you’re asking about Julia, huh?”

Even though Donny had his back turned and couldn’t see him, Jimmy nodded. “You love her,” he said flatly. A fact. Like “Tennessee v Scopes dealt with separation of church and state”. 

“Yeah,” Donny turned around, shrugging his shirt over his shoulders, the same acidity in his voice but this time it sounded like lemonade. 

Jimmy smiled to himself. “Good. I’m glad. Do you think it might interfere with the band?”

Donny lifted the covers on his bed and climbed in. “I think that’s one of the reasons she wouldn’t let me stay. She doesn’t want it to become an issue if we were to start-”

“You wouldn’t be the first two in the band to pair off,” Jimmy shrugged. 

Donny sat up straight. “Have you-”

“No, not me. Wayne and Nick.”

“Ah. Right, I should have known. Do you think they’re really, um,” Donny waved his hand. 

“If they aren’t already, then I think they will be soon,” Jimmy nodded. He was glad for them, finding something after what they’d witnessed and lived and lost. “Tonight might be it for them.”

“Well, at least we won’t be the only ones dealing with the problem of relationships hurting the band.” Donny laughed lowly, and then paused, thinking. “We won’t be the first. Will we be the last?”

Jimmy hummed. “We’ll see.”

“Do you hope you’ll be next?” Donny seemed all to interested in prodding now that the subject wasn’t him. 

“We’ll see,” Jimmy repeated and rolled over in his bed. The yes he wanted to say hit the sides of his skull, but he kept it inside by closing his eyes and getting some sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there's probably too much light imagery in this chapter  
> also i used voice to text for most of this so if there are mistakes im SORRY  
> the last comments were so nice i feel like im under a lot of pressure to keep doing well

They lost the competition. Well, he didn't know if it could be losing if they defaulted. Either way, it was disappointing. The seven of them had worked so hard for this, and to not win in any fashion felt like a punch to the gut. The lights that had last night seemed so enchanting now seemed mocking, like examples of all the people who had done what the band couldn't do. He knew that wasn't right, and he was proud to have caught the mistake, but the excitement of New York City had drained from his body.  
The lights may have seemed dishonest, but the applause they had received at the end of the song was the most genuine sound he thought he'd ever heard. It was gunfire, it was waves on the side of a boat, it was the harmony of a brass band. The applause was a promise that there was still something true in music and in the world, even if he forgot it on long nights up studying all the ways a person could disobey their moral compass. 

“Hey,” Donny looked up at Jimmy from his perch on his bed. “Um, thanks. You did a good thing today.”

“We all did,” Jimmy answered simply, not looking up from the law book he was pretending he was reading. 

“Yeah, well. We couldn’t have done it without you, right? So thank you. I’m really, uh, proud to be able to play with you.”

Jimmy turned around. “Yeah,” he looked at Donny, who wouldn’t meet his eyes. “You too.”

There was a knock at the door, and Donny stood up before Jimmy could. 

“Hi, Nick,” he opened the door to let him in, but Nick didn’t move from the doorway. 

“We're all going to the bar downstairs. We kind of figured we needed something to do, and would rather do it as a band. It's good to not be alone, and all that. Wayne is there, even if it's past his bedtime.” Nick rolled his eyes fondly, and Jimmy felt a rush of affection for both Nick and Wayne. 

“Jimmy?” Donny turned around to look. 

“Yeah, let’s do it. It beats trying to get this reading done.” 

The bar wasn't as full as he had anticipated. Aside from a few old men at a booth in the corner: regulars, judging by the way they knew the names of all the waitresses, and a table with two young women and two young men, the band members were the only people there. And they didn't talk much. It didn't feel like there was much to say. They all knew that they had done the right thing for themselves and for people watching across the country. Still, silence with his bandmates - his friends - was preferable to silence in the hotel room, with only Donny, his books, and his own thoughts as company. As drinks went around and glasses emptied (his second night drinking in a row: Jimmy hoped he wouldn't make it a habit. At least he wasn’t drinking enough to get seriously drunk), the overhead lights began to blur. And now, they were cheering for him again. Him, and the rest of his group. Cheering like they'd won the war single-handedly, and like everything would return to the way it was because of them. It didn't matter that none of that was true. It mattered that, like Donny had said, this was true. Right here, with people he trusted more than anything, trusted like he didn't think he'd be able to, and only trusted because he knew that impossibly, they trusted him back in the same way.  
Wayne and Nick went back to the room by 10:15. Something was going on, obvious in the way that Nick had memorized Wayne’s schedule like his favorite piece of music, and in the way that Wayne could feel the signs of one of Nick's outbursts like a premonition and put his hand next to - not on top of - Nick’s hand. Jimmy shook his head when the waitress asked if he’d like another drink. Davy offered to take it for him, and he chuckled, but watched Davy drink it all when she brought two mugs back to the table. He, along with Donny and Julia, listened in on the joke that Davy so firmly believed imperative for Johnny to understand. Johnny focused in on the joke, nodding along and laughing when Davy laughed, shooting Jimmy an uncertain look while Davy was caught up in his own hilarity. Jimmy smiled at him, hoping it was reassuring, and mouthed ‘it's fine’. The joke was mediocre and crude at best.  
This was not the normal to which he had originally wanted to return. But that dream of normality was long gone, and in its place had grown something much more interesting. Interesting wasn't the only word for it: exciting, hopeful, frightening, familial. 

“We’d better get you up to your room, Miss Trojan,” Donny’s voice wasn't quite slurring, but one more drink and he'd have been there. “Not too good for a lady to be out drinking after 11.” 

“After all that I've hung out with you boys,” Julia giggled, “I'm not sure I could be called that much of a lady anymore.” But she took Donny's outstretched hand and squeezed it, blushing. Jimmy didn't miss how Donny blushed too. He wondered if tonight would be the night Donny didn't get back to their hotel room, then he once again banished the thought from his head.  
He, Johnny, and Davy stared at each other. They were all so fucking tired from the day's stresses. For Davy, maybe the best way to get more awake was to stay where he was. And Jimmy could respect that. The best thing for Jimmy, however, would be to call it a night.He said a few dollars on the table and clapped Davy on the shoulder.

“Thanks for suggesting that we don't be alone tonight,” he smiled at his friend.

“Wasn't me,” Davy shook his head and pointed at the other man sitting next to him. “Johnny's the smart one here.”

Jimmy blinked, the lights still in his eyes. “Oh. Good idea, Johnny.”

“I jus’ didn't want the stay in the hotel room all night,” Johnny tossed back the last of his drink, and Jimmy looked away so he didn’t get caught focusing on how his adam’s apple bobbed or how his hair glowed. “I'll head up with you. ‘S getting late.”

“No, no,” Davy rested his hand on the table. “I’ll just hang out here while all the lovebirds go have their fun. Not like I feel like a seventh wheel.” 

Jimmy took some comfort in the way that Johnny's cheeks went as red as his did. And he knew that if Donny and Julia or Wayne and Nick were here, they would look the same. Instead of dignifying the comment with a proper response, Jimmy rolled his eyes and put his hand on Johnny's shoulder blade, smiling smally at Davy and walking out of the bar. 

“Are you sad we lost?” Johnny asked once they were in the elevator and the noise from the hotel lobby had died down.

“Well, yes. I'm sad that we lost our goal, and that people who paid for us to get here aren't getting what they gave.”

“ I'm happy we played Welcome Home, though. Even if,” Johnny smiled like something was sad and he was comforting a child. “Even if she said some stuff about all of us that I didn't expect. She's not wrong, and I guess if it's the truth then she's got a reason to say it.”

“Yeah, I agree. I really didn't expect it.” He thought back to that moment onstage when he heard Julia say his name. After hearing what she said about Jimmy, and Wayne, and Davy, he had prepared himself for a comment about staying out of people's ways because it was easier. And he got that for the most part, and to anyone else it might have sounded like that was all it was. But subtly, Julia had told the world the truth. More importantly, she told Jimmy the truth, and still included him in the ‘my boys’ afterwards. 

“Yeah, I could tell,” Johnny stepped out of the elevator and into the hallway where both of their rooms were. “I knew there was supposed to be a sax solo there, but you started playing and you looked broken when you played. What did she say again?”

Jimmy closed his eyes and paused in the hallway, trying to remember. “Jimmy made it back to town four months ago,” he whispered, nodding his head to the beat of the song. “He lives to tell of things no one could bear to know. He keeps his guard up now a lot, goes undiscussed. Focuses on fighting what he finds unjust.”

“Oh, like how you found the clause about them owning our song if we played! And how you’re getting a law degree! I get it.”

“Yeah,” Jimmy choked out. “Exactly.”

The two of them walked in silence to Johnny’s door, and stopped outside of it. 

“Jimmy? What do you think’s gonna happen now? I mean, now that we lost?”

Jimmy shook his head. “I don’t know. I guess we go back to Cleveland, and we keep playing gigs. I don’t think any of us could leave the band now. We’ve sacrificed a lot for it.”

And they had: all of them. Wayne and his kids, Julia and her job, Nick and his home, Jimmy and getting the law degree on time (he wouldn’t kid himself, staying on track with anything was harder with those six around), Donny and his fame and fortune to be gained in New York. He was sure the rest of them had sacrificed things he couldn’t think of. Although he didn’t know if Johnny had left anything behind for the band. He almost hoped so, because he wanted Johnny to have had good things in his life. The same way he wanted his other bandmates to have good things in his life, he told himself. Simple as that.  
But he looked up at Johnny, who nodded with his assessment of the future, and his heart jumped, the same way it did when he stepped onstage. Fear and pride and affection for the people around him and the feeling of falling. 

“Yeah. I’m just glad it’s going to be okay. I mean, playing with you guys is the happiest I’ve been in about forever, I think. So as long as I can still do that, I don’t care that much,” Johnny looked up, like he was studying Jimmy’s face. 

And okay, maybe that was the most genuine sound he’d ever heard. Because Johnny’s face didn’t show a shred of lies, or any lack of pure wonder at the notion of staying in the Donny Nova Band. 

And Jimmy wasn’t quite sure, but he was laughing, and then he wasn’t, silenced by a pair of lips on his own, warm and buzzed and tasting kind of like beer but mostly like tiredness and reassurance.  
Jimmy pulled back. 

“I, um,” he breathed, and then it was his turn to study Johnny’s face. Johnny’s surprised, blushing face, complete with glinting eyes. 

“I guess Davy was right,” Johnny grinned mischievously. 

Jimmy bit his tongue. “Oh my god, I guess so. He’s pretty smart, huh?”

“Yeah,” Johnny bent into Jimmy, resting his head on his shoulder and wrapping his arms around him. Jimmy softened into the hug, breathing slowly like Johnny was glass and he didn’t want to fracture something. “What do you think is gonna happen now, once we go home?”

Jimmy smiled softly at the familiar question. “I don’t know. I don’t think I need to know.”

“I’m glad I don’t know,” Johnny straightened up. “But I think it’ll be good. Maybe better than before we came to New York.”

“I like that,” Jimmy nodded, and pressed a kiss to Johnny’s cheek. “I’ll see you in the morning, okay?”

Johnny’s shoulders rose and fell. “Okay.” He turned the key in the lock, opened the door, and put one foot in his hotel room that he shared with Davy, pausing quickly to wave goodnight to Jimmy. 

Jimmy returned the wave, then turned on his heel and walked down the hallway, lights of New York City flashing in his head again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey and feel free to send me prompts on tumblr I really want to write Wayne/Nick but don’t know what to write so if you’ve got ideas I’d love to hear them!!

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading! Let me know what you thought of it, and come say hi on tumblr @allbesolucky or @javidblue!


End file.
